1. Where deep relationships are formed
Many of our closest friendships are formed during school, university, or at work. That is no coincidence. In those phases and environments, we spend a lot of time together. We work on things together, experience situations together, and become part of each other’s everyday lives. Relationships are built there not only through conversations about life, but through experiencing life together.
2. What changes later on
Later in life, things often look different - outside of work, at least. We meet for lunch, coffee, or dinner. Two or three hours. We tell each other what has happened in recent weeks. Work, family, plans. Essentially, we update each other; we bring one another up to speed. That is pleasant and often stimulating. But it is something different: we talk about life, but we no longer experience it together.
3. A simple observation
This became very clear to me again recently. I spent several days visiting different friends, staying overnight with them. Not a classic meetup, but time within everyday life. Shared breakfasts, spontaneous conversations, helping each other with small tasks - things that simply happened naturally. And it immediately felt different: closer, more natural, more meaningful.
In a very short time, a depth emerged that you rarely reach through many separate meetings of two or three hours.
4. A parallel to work
I experience something similar in a professional context as well. As a self-employed entrepreneur with a remote team, I often miss exactly this: working together in the same room, feeling the energy of others, noticing moods and dynamics.
Here too, the strongest connections are not built in calls, but through this shared physical time together.
As much as I value the independence and freedom I gained after founding my executive search boutique, I do miss the close and intense relationships with colleagues that naturally develop when you see each other every day in an office. For everyone who still has that - even after the post-Covid shift - be grateful for it.
5. What we can take from this
The insight itself is actually quite simple: relationships are not primarily built through exchanging information, but through shared experiences. Which makes it even more important to consciously create opportunities for that.
At work, whenever possible. And in private life, perhaps by slightly changing the question.
Not just: “When should we meet again?”
But: “What should we do together again?”
6. My impulse
With whom would you like to spend more time - not just in conversation, but in shared experiences?
And when was the last time you truly did something together instead of only talking about it?
Because closeness rarely emerges from telling each other about life.
It emerges from living at least part of it together.
